Studio 54

A film looking back on a nightclub in New York that came to symbolise its era.

In
1977 two old friends from Brooklyn set up the nightclub Studio 54 in a
building that was the site of a former theatre. They were taking a huge
and expensive gamble. That it paid off is history since the club has
come to epitomise the escapist glamour of New York in the late 1970s,
that era before Aids when alternative life styles flourished in a venue
that welcomed the clientele regardless of their sexuality and drew in
many a celebrity. In 1998, Mark Christopher’s film 54
featured a story built around the club, but neither the version
initially issued nor a later director’s cut made any real impact. Now,
however, we have this much more successful piece by Matt Tyrnauer: it
is not that unusual for a documentary film to be followed by a
dramatised treatment of the same material, but here we have that
process in reverse and it is Tyrnauer’s documentary that will be
remembered as the screen’s effective portrayal of Studio 54 and what it
represented.

That Tyrnauer is an accomplished documentarian was already known to us through such works as Citizen Jane: Battle for the City
(2016). What could not be assumed was that he would prove to be the
ideal filmmaker to capture the atmosphere of Studio 54 at the height of
its success. But in the event he triumphs aided by a superb soundtrack
capturing the music of the time and further helped by the sense of
energy - a key part of that atmosphere - which still radiates from Ian
Schrager. The latter, the main figure here, was the club’s heterosexual
co-founder who is seen here looking back on the rise and fall of Studio
54 (his more flamboyant partner, the gay Steve Rubell, died of Aids in
1989 at the age of 45 so Schrager is now the one man qualified to tell
the full inside story).

The first half of Studio 54
details the background and the events leading to the birth of the club
after which the film deals with later legal controversies over
licenses, drugs and, most significantly as it would turn out, tax
evasion. This second half lacks a natural shape, but it enables
Tyrnauer to give us some information about the careers of Schrager and
Rubell after the demise of the club. Interest is thus maintained.
However, it is really when it celebrates Studio 54 that Tyrnauer’s film
is at its most effective. The portrait painted of a paradise lost may
be one-sided, but it is what many will want to remember or to relish as
epitomising a past period in New York’s story.